April 29, 2013

Changes

Dear Mom,

I still maintain that you don't have to do chi-squared unless both your manipulated and responding variables are qualitative. But then again, I remember exactly how impressed I was with my Stats prof last semester, so whatever.

Those are really cute pictures. I'm glad Ortensia liked my letter to Monte. The blue thing is supposed to be a dragon. And I ended up drawing an ostrich because I was trying to draw a horse, but then the head looked like an ostrich head instead, so I turned it into that.

I think I met Elder Sloan, but I met like a trillion missionaries at the transfer lunch and I think I'd had like 3 hours of sleep in the last 48 hours, so I don't remember what he looks like. But I've heard about him. The sisters in my district all think he's awesome.

That's so great about badminton divisionals. I'm pretty sure I lost two games in a row and was out of the tournament in Junior High. Beating Edison is pretty impressive. One time in high school, I only lost by two points to an Asian team from Western. I felt like that was pretty much as good as winning.

Good job to Steven on the o-chem test, that's a pretty big deal. And yeah, you never want to be last presenter at ANYTHING. I think pathology is fascinating though. It would be pretty funny if Mason trained Federico. I don't know if that will happen since Mason's technically French-speaking and Federico is I think technically Spanish speaking, but hey, you never know.

This week has been pretty crazy. On Monday we were supposed to have an appointment with Roseann, but it fell through (she later dropped us via text message and it was sad), so we went to Bay Roberts a few hours early after P-day to do exchanges. We worked in their area on Monday night and Tuesday, but didn't really accomplish much due to some messy planning. Also, nobody in Bay Roberts has addresses. So all the referrals are like, "They live down this road and you turn left by the pond and then it's the house with the long driveway and a fence and red trim." So we spent a long time looking for people, which led to various adventures, such as accidentally pulling up to the house of whatever the Newfoundlander equivalent of a redneck is, and then later having our car chased by a cow. It was great. And then we finally found this lady's house, and she didn't even answer the door. Yep.

That evening, Elder Walker came and gave a fireside in Bay Roberts. The branch only has about 8 people, but people from St. John's came too. I told him that he dated my Grandma. He would like Grandma Olson to know, for the record, that he didn't dump her; he went on a mission and she was married when he came home. Whatever. He told everyone in the chapel that he had dated my Grandma at the beginning of his talk. It was great.

Then on Wednesday we had Zone Conference with him in St. John's and we learned a lot of stuff. It was really good, but I forgot my notes. One thing he told us was that President Monson once told all the General Authorities in a meeting inside the temple that they needed to read their patriarchal blessings more often. I thought that was pretty cool; that even Apostles and General Authorities still benefit from their patriarchal blessings, so how much more can we benefit from studying them?

Then on Wednesday afternoon we were supposed to have an appointment with Michael, but he cancelled too. So we decided to go knocking in this one community that's really new. A few weeks ago, we were looking at the map and trying to decide where to knock, and I was getting this distinct impression about an area of the map that doesn't have any roads on it. And I said, "Okay, we know our map is incomplete, and I think there's a road right here that we don't know exists that we need to knock." So later on, we used the LDS meetinghouse locator to find a more accurate map, and I found the street I wanted. I even specifically knew what area of the street to knock. So we started knocking, and the second house in, this girl Erica let us in and we taught her. It was amazing, and also really funny. She's a foreman on some oilfield rig, and you could tell. For example, after we taught her the First Vision, it was silent for a moment, then she said, "Wow. You guys are f---ing powerful." Hahaha. And then we went over Moroni's promise with her, and before we could commit her to read, she said, "Can I have this book?" "...yes! Yes you can!" "Good. Because I already put my bookmark in it. I don't know if you noticed. But it's my book now." "Okay." And without us even committing her, she said, "I'm going to read this tonight. That's a promise. And then I'll pray, and then I'll know."

Then on Friday we went back for our next appointment and she didn't answer, and she hasn't texted us back. When we were at the end of the street, we saw her going into her house with a friend, and when we taught her on Wednesday we could tell she felt like having religious feelings was really weird and something that people would generally laugh at, so we hope it's just because her friend was there.

On Thursday, we had a "Ward Blitz Night," which is something new we tried for the first time. We got ward members to go on splits with us to visit less-active members. None of the members on my list were home, but Sister Larsen was just so great. She left little messages on all their doors and she was just so excited to do missionary work and she was telling me about all the people she just visits because she wants to be nice, and all her ideas about sharing the gospel with her neighbours. It made me really happy. And then we didn't have a sure address for the last person on our list, but Sister Larsen really wanted to go visit her, so she suggested that we just go knocking and ask people if they know where this lady lives. You don't get members offer to go knocking very often, haha. It was great. She totally contributed to door approaches and after every door she'd say something like, "That was amazing Sister Olson! You're so awesome!" Haha. I guess you can all figure out why I enjoyed going out with her so much :P

And then on Friday...that was an interesting day. So earlier in the week, we called the mission office for something, and Sister Calvert said something to Sister Judd about coming down on Monday. Sister Judd didn't know anything about this, but we thought that maybe Sister Nelson was getting transferred off the Rock and that Sister Judd would be the Sister Training Leader, because we knew there was a training conference in Halifax on Monday and Tuesday. So Friday is weekly planning, and we wanted to know if she was leaving and when her flight left before we scheduled appointments that conflicted or anything like that, so we called Sister Calvert and asked her. She said, "I can't tell you that. But when I do call you, you'll be moving quickly. Also, if you had to pack, how much stuff do you have to bring with you?" We were just like, um, what? And then a few hours later, she called Sister Judd and said, "Has President called you? No? Well, you didn't hear it from me, but it's a one-way ticket. Pack all your things." Sister Judd was just like, WHAT IS GOING ON???? because it isn't the end of the transfer yet. So we called up to the Zone Leaders, and they said they'd call the Assistants. They called back and said, "The Assistants say President will call you tonight, and not to worry about it," to which Sister Judd replied, "I'm a girl! I'm going to worry about it!" Haha.

We called our District Leader, Elder Beckert, and he said, "Sister Judd, just go get a milkshake or something." "Thank you. I feel like I need to eat my feelings right now." "You eat those feelings. If you need anything, just let me know." You can totally tell he has four sisters, haha. So FINALLY, President Leavitt called that night. He's going to transfer her and make her a STL in a different area, and since transfers are next week but training is this week, he doesn't want to fly her down, then fly her back up, then fly her back down. So she's leaving this afternoon, and Sister Leavy is coming up from Bay Roberts to be my temporary companion, since they were in a trio there. Sister Leavy is only one transfer older than me, so she's pretty nervous about it, but I feel pretty excited. Although, I did feel the need to buy a GPS, because neither of us know our way around. Haha.

Then on Saturday we were supposed to teach our investigator who's on date, but she skipped the appointment AGAIN, and she didn't come to church, so now she's off-date. We're going to try to see her this week and figure out what's up. And then on Sunday we basically just went around saying goodbye to everyone, so it was rather unproductive. What with going to Bay Roberts, having Zone Conference, weekly planning day, and preparing for her to leave, we did a super lame job with key indicators this week, since we essentially only went out proselyting for two and a half days. So Elder Morin, one of the assistants, called me this morning to ask how my area was doing and discuss finding ideas with me and whatever, so I don't have as much time to email as usual. I think this is still a pretty long letter though.

Oh yeah, last P-day we went out to Cape Spear, and instead of just going up the path to the lighthouse and looking at the historic sites, Elder Raymant and Elder Diodati decided they wanted to climb along the edge of the cliff by the ocean all day. I thought I was going to die. It was so steep. And the Elders kept jumping off of stuff yelling "Parkour!!!" and then "I nearly died!!!" and I was just like, "Shut UP." Haha. It was a really fun day though. I'm going to send pictures in a separate email.